Cracker products are generally formed by cutting out the desired shape of the cracker from a sheet of cracker dough and baking the cracker dough to form a baked cracker product. Various approaches can be used to form the dough and cut the dough into pieces having the desired shapes for baking. For example, individual cutters or molds may be used to form the cracker dough into a desired shape. More automated processes involve the use of cutting dies which define the shape of the prebaked dough piece. The cutting die may be attached to a reciprocating cutting plate or a rotary cutting drum. In many instances, the rotary cutting dies are often desirable because sheets of cracker dough can be fed to the rotary cutting die and cut into their desired dough shaped pieces in a continuous process to increase throughput.
When using the cutting die, it is generally desirable to reduce an amount of scrap material or dough not formed into a cracker shape, which can occur along the edges of the dough sheet or through spaces between the individual cutting dies disposed on the cutter. Various configurations for the production of cracker products using cutting dies exist; however, each may have shortcomings when applied to non-symmetrical or thin shapes, such as elbow-shaped crackers. For example, it is relatively straightforward to form rectangular shaped crackers using cutting dies because the cutting blade defining the rectangular crackers may be easily positioned adjacent and even abutting each other to minimize and eliminate such waste. Positioning non-symmetrical cutting blades on a cutter die in a fashion similar to rectangular shapes tends to result in increased waste and decreased throughout
With round shaped crackers, other difficulties need to be addressed to form an efficient cutting die. Because of their round shape, the adjacent edges of the cutting blades utilized for forming round dough shapes cannot be positioned to eliminate waste, thereby forming rework of dough during cutting due to the material between the cutting blades. Processes that use rotary dies generally anticipate such rework and include processing steps to separate and recycle the dough portions between the cutting blades. In general, cutting dies used to form cracker products having a round shape may result in up to about 30 to about 33 percent scrap material or rework, thus decreasing throughput, and increasing waste or adding expense due to complicated recycle and rework processes. In some instances, the circular shapes can be nested and closely spaced to reduce the waste/rework, but the constraint of the circular shapes tend to result in some level of waste or rework due to unused dough between the cutout die blades. Again, applying the techniques suitable for circular cutting blades to form cutters for non-symmetrical shapes tends to result in unacceptable waste and throughput.
While the designer of a cutting die will generally arrange the cutting blade shapes on the die surface to reduce unusable portions, the nature of the round or rectangular shapes as described above presents a relatively straight forward cutting blade arrangement process to produce the most efficient die configuration. With rectangular or round crackers, there is generally a single degree of freedom with die construction, which is positioning the cut out blades in the best possible nested or abutting configuration to minimize or eliminate un-used material between the cut-out blades. With non-symmetrical shapes and less conventional shapes, such as relatively thin, elbow-shaped cutouts, the traditional placement of cutting blades on a die surface to achieve the desired cutout is not a straight forward process due to many more degrees of freedom that must be considered. For instance, when forming a die to cut out non-symmetrical shapes and especially relatively thin non-symmetrical shapes such as elbow shapes, not only does the nesting configuration need to be selected, but the particular shape itself, any curvature of the shape, weight, thickness and width of the shape all must also be considered. Adjusting one of these parameters tends to substantially affect the configuration of the die. The difficulty lies in the constraint that the formed cracker needs to retain its non-symmetrical appearance, but still be formed using a robust cutting die and sheeting process to produce the cutout shapes with good through put and minimal breakage.